Re: [tied] -phóros, -phorós, -fer

On 2006-04-06 13:02, tgpedersen wrote:

> Gk phóros "a carrying"
> Gk phorós "a carrying (person), a carrier"
>
> Latin -fer "a carrying (person, object)"
>
> The two first are recognised to be related; phorós is an adjective
> derived from the noun phóros.

Not quite. The adjective is more fundamental. <pHóros> is zero-derived
with stress retraction. However, actually, *pHorós did not survive as an
independent word in Greek, and in compounds we have <-pHóros> 'carrier'
with penult accent (but that's a Greek accentual innovation).

> But phóros is thematic, and adjectives
> in -ós are supposedly derived from athematic nouns.

So it would seem.

> The noun -fer is athematic.

Um... Not _Latin_ -fer. It's as thematic as Gk. -pHóros. Latin has a
rule which deletes the ending -us after -r- (as in <puer>). It's m.
fru:gi-fer (pl. fru:gi-feri:), f. fru:gi-fera, n. fru:gi-ferum
'fruit-bearing'.

> So it was once N *bhér-&s (or
> *´-bh&r-s), G *bh&r-ós.
>
> The noun -fer (etc) does not occur outside of compounds.

So far you haven't shown that a root noun like *bHer- occurs in compounds!

> But since
> it is originally identical to Gk phóros and phorós, those two latter
> have their /o/'s from the fact that they can occur as independent
> words (but often they don't).

So independent words get /o/'s? Why?

Piotr